


Ever Wilting Rose

by AnarchyPamda



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death, Character Turned Into a Ghost, F/F, Lack of Communication, Minor Violence, Suicidal Thoughts, Two Shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21658477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnarchyPamda/pseuds/AnarchyPamda
Summary: If you told Glimmer that she was going to get trapped on a spaceship with her greatest rival and be forced to work together to save not just Etheria but the greater universe, resulting in them becoming romantically involved and then when they had finally won and finally made sense of each other Catra would die in her hands, she would think you were crazy.If you told Catra she was going to end up haunting her girlfriend, well, she’d be more concerned debating you over whether or not she won her bet with Adora.
Relationships: Catra/Glimmer (She-Ra), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	Ever Wilting Rose

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I originally intended to write a one-shot that required like a thousand word prologue just to set up what happened before the main half of the story, and then I massively overwrote that set-up and ended up having five thousand words of preamble. The actual fic should be out sometime next year, probably in late January.

Catra had made a joke with Adora when they were kids after they’d first learned about ghosts, something about how if Adora let Shadow Weaver kill her then she was going to haunt her until she got revenge. The blond hadn’t found that to be funny and got upset at the idea that she would ever let Shadow Weaver hurt her, the idea that she would be killed was absurd. The cat had countered with the fact that they were Horde soldiers and fighting was going to be a necessity, that the Horde considered a death in battle to be the most honourable thing that a person could do. Adora, completely believing in the Horde and it’s inner workings at the time, had cited some obscure rule in the handbook that upon request a married couple would only ever be sent on deployment together, and that she was going to marry the other girl one day so she would always be there to protect her.

Both of them had made little promises together after that, both jokes but they had ended up coming true anyway. When Catra said that the Horde let people engage in homosexual relationships but not marriage Adora had then switched tracks and said she’d become a Force Captain so she could arrange for them to always be on mission together anyway. The cat just couldn’t stop pestering the blond, so she’d ended that conversation with a variation on her initial comment, the only part of that conversation preserved in any real way.

“Okay so if I die in battle with my girlfriend/commanding officer, I will haunt you until you join me, deal?”

Catra had meant for that question to be aimed at Adora but from where she was half standing/half lying dead on the ground it seemed that the universe had picked up on it instead and had agreed. A sword had put a jagged, and to her limited memory painful, cut through her body that had removed her left leg and a long crescent of flesh and organs above it in the process, Glimmer had told her about funerals one night and the fact that enough of her upper body was fine that she could get an open casket was almost soothing to the spirit. She turned her eyes up to look at the pink-haired woman who’s lap her real head was in, watched tears fall from her eyes and onto the lifeless corpse in her arms. If death had broken her heart in the literal fashion than having to see her go through that was enough to break her emotionally, without any real idea of what she could do Catra just sat down next to her and watched her cry.

* * *

When they had first gotten pulled onto Hoard Prime’s ship everything had been terrible and both girls were taking very different approaches to the whole affair. Catra wanted to die and she wanted it quick and painless, operating with the goals of staying barely alive and looking for that easy death somewhere. Glimmer on the other hand just saw a new threat that needed to be dealt with, and after the third time, she’d been flogged for trying something that this wasn’t a battle she knew how to fight. The two girls shared a single room/cell, so the queen walked out on a branch one night and decided to ask her old enemy for help.

“Catra can I ask you about something?”

It took a moment but eventually, the other girl lazily rolled into a sitting position on her cot.

“Fuck it, why not.” There was no energy in her voice.

“Who came up with that Princess Prom scheme?”

“I did.”

“All by your self?”

Catra rolled her eyes and laid back down, ready to go to sleep but still responding for the time being.

“All the planning was mine.”

“And giving Adora the sword and blaming Shadow Weaver for the plan’s failure, was that also you?”

“If you know about that then you’ve talked to Weaver and you already know the answer.”

“But I want to hear you say it.”

“Yes, I manipulated the situation to get rid of Shadow Weaver, why are you bothering me?”

“I need to take down Horde Prime and look I can fight and plan, but no one ever taught me about social descent and backstabbing. So, maybe could you?”

Catra emanated a lifeless laugh that set the other girl’s nerves on fire. “Hope Prime has a guillotine around here for traitors.”

* * *

Glimmer learned exactly one thing from Catra over the course of the next month, and whilst it made the former queen sick to her stomach the former Horde soldier had praised her for how well she’d done. On day one Catra had told her how she was going to learn this type of combat and she’d picked up that part and only that part. You couldn’t just have someone explain to you how to lie or the slightly better idea of practising it, instead you had to live your life as a liar and trickster anything less than that and you wouldn’t be able to think fast enough on your feet so as to stop everything from falling apart.

It wasn’t until they got into the actual training that Glimmer got her little master plan developed and started doing what the other girl was trying to teach her, all of it resting again on that idea of practical experience that Catra was pushing. Their first “operation”, as she liked to call them, was to fix Glimmer reputation on the ship, being known as a troublemaker who kept up through repeated punishment would not be conducive to getting in the good graces of Horde Prime. The mission was a simple one on Glimmer half all she had to do was run off to the throne room and bring him down to the engine room when she woke up the next day, her teacher saying that the setup would all be on her, but Glimmer had to bring the ship to port.

Catra had left after that presumably to start work and Glimmer didn’t see her again all day, all the more worrying when that night as she had returned to their room the place was empty save a note that the cat somehow gotten into the room whilst she’d slept and left a note with an outline for a script. To say that when she woke up, she’d seen her making the finishing touches on a bomb and deciding where to put it, and after the other girl left the room, she’d immediately sprinted down to alert him to what was happening in the engine room. So, Glimmer hid the note on her body, Catra said to hide it for now and burn it later, and full sprinted her way down to the throne room to start the plan.

Things went exceedingly well up until the point where Glimmer realized that she hadn’t been thinking about who she was asking to help her, that she hadn’t considered the fact that Catra would have her own agenda in motion. The other girl made everything very real because otherwise, the plan didn’t work, getting an actual bomb and appearing to just be about to blow up the fuel storage destroying everything. As a result it meant that when Glimmer and Prime had entered into the area and found her about to blow the device he immediately grabbed her by the neck and started choking her to death for trying to kill everyone, and with a half-smile on her dying face Glimmer realized that the other girl had planned for this to be her quick death so they both got what they wanted.

She acted on impulse and started spinning a story to Horde Prime, one founded in enough truth that it sounded completely normal coming out of her mouth. Said that Catra wanted to die, she’d been suicidal since before he had picked them up and that killing her wouldn’t be a punishment but a reward. Insisted as she watched her lose that smile as she was to brain dead to move muscles to let her live because it was the cruellest punishment, and as she let the words spill out of her mouth and nausea grow alongside them she realized that she’d gotten exactly what Catra had promised her.

Prime had dropped the body to the ground and told Glimmer to take the traitor back to their cell, placing a cold hand on her shoulder as he praised her for how much she’d improved since her last punishment. When he left the room, the queen had gone to pick up her teacher before proceeding to throw up in the girl’s hair, then in there that she didn’t have the stomach to be the kind of person that Catra was and she was going to have to go about things differently. Glimmer dragged themselves both back to their room and tossed the other girl into the personal shower, letting the water run down her face to get the vomit off her and hopeful afterwards wake her up.

“Hay Sparkles.” Her voice was barely audible and sounded like gravel, damages from getting choked that had severely damaged her voice for the rest of her days. Glimmer crawled her way across the bathroom so she could hear her better.

“What’s up?”

“Next time you think to give a cat a bath, fucking don’t.”

“I threw up in your hair.”

“YOU DID WHAT?!”

* * *

Whilst the other girl rested Glimmer started working on her plan because Catra idea that she was going to get close to Horde Prime just wasn’t something she had the stomach for, the evilness required to take her desire for her kinda friend to live and frame it like it was some kind of cruel punishment wasn’t something she wanted to ever approach again. As she thought about it, she figured out the only way she could think to make sure she wouldn’t be going through this again, instead of centring their plans around Glimmer they would have to focus them on Catra. The only problem was they had just gotten her branded as a suicidal terrorist so Prime would put his trust in Glimmer, trying to refocus their efforts at this point didn’t seem like it was going to be an option.

The former queen didn’t sleep that night but she did figure out how everything was going to operate going forth after she realized one key factor, in less than twenty-four hours she had managed to acquire and get a fully functional bomb into the engine room without so much as a single person on the ship batting an eye. She realized that it was next to impossible that Catra had done that all on her own and in the short time they had been on the ship she had already made some close allies that seemed like they wouldn’t flip for anything. Glimmer’s plan became a simple one after she figured that out, Catra would operate in the background pulling strings and then she would be there to pick up the rewards; all of her lies focused on making sure the other girl thought she was just trying to teach through experience.

That first month consisted of a large number of plans focused on making her seem competent and gaining trust the trust of Horde Prime so they could move onto Catra’s unrevealed phase two, practically passing by like a blur for Glimmer as she really did was feigned incompetence until the other girl showed her what to do by doing it herself. All she’d really had to do was lie to Prime over and over again taking credit for something Catra had done; she was given a list of Catra’s co-cohorts in the bomb plant and passed it off like she had found them out through investigation, Catra planted evidence of conspiracy on two of Prime’s Force Captains and she had exposed them as traitors, Catra had tortured a supposed traitor for information and she told Prime that she’d done it and cut out the man’s tongue out for speaking badly about him.

And after all those different schemes and underhanded tactics, thirty-three days into they’re machinations Glimmer completed phase one as she returned to their room with a Force Commander badge on her chest. Glimmer laid down on Catra’s bed when she got back and rested her head in the other girl’s lap, they’d started doing this a few days before and hadn’t really talked about it.

“You know it kinda makes me feel sick seeing you wear that.”

“I feel sick wearing it.”

“Please do not throw up on me again.”

“I’ve only done that twice.”

“Twice is two times too many to be throwing up on someone.” When Catra stopped speaking she reached down and pulled the pin out of the other girl’s shirt and tossed it onto the side table at the bed's foot. “You’ve gone far for someone who is not very capable.”

“I am plenty capable.”

“You can lie to one dude and kind of react quickly, but you can’t manipulate people, can’t pickpocket, can’t plant evidence, can’t come up with plots, can’t double-cross, can’t judge marks, you are a useless baby.”

“Jokes on you I can lie to two people!”

“I know you can lie to yourself, it’s not praiseworthy.”

“Shut up. I was actually talking about you...”

“Really? How have you been lying to me?”

Glimmer bit down on her lip and stopped looking up at the other girl for a moment, seeing all the terrible things that Catra had for her in the last month and the fact that she was making her do those things in her place made everything feel all that much worse. Her feeling around the other girl was getting confusing at this point and keeping this up felt so bad she didn’t think she could keep doing it.

“I-I’ve been… lying to you about what I can do. Purposely messing training up so when we had to actually do things, you’d do them for me. It all felt so bad that I just couldn’t do it but now I feel bad making you do-.” Catra placed a finger across Glimmer lips and turned her head so it was looking back up at her, wiping the tears forming in the edges of her eyes away with her other hand.

“That’s okay Sparkles.”

“W-what? No, it’s not.”

“Stop it. Look I’d beat someone to death if they tried to claim I enjoyed the things I’d done, but I’m proud of a lot of them. Like that kid I tortured today? I don’t think I will ever get the screams out of my head and I don’t think I should try to, but if you gave me the ability to go back and change my mind I wouldn’t. It was important, it got you Force Captain and I can rationalise hurting one person to save the whole universe from a dictator very easily.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Spark… Glim, if we’re being honest with ourselves there’s no world where I wasn’t taking over the dark stuff for you, your still mostly innocent and I wanna preserve that.”

“Do you care about something besides dying now?”

“Don’t tell anyone.” They sat in silence for a minute, Catra absentmindedly running a hand through her friends’ hair.

“Catra do you like me?”

“I mean you master my first lesson, so I guess that entitles you to something.”

“No, I mean- like- ugh.” Glimmer sat up and grabbed the other girl by the neck, putting their lips just inches apart as they stared into each other’s eyes. “Do you like me.”

“Well I, uh, -.”

“Just for this moment drop all the lies and the planning and the tricks and everything you do and give me a straight answer.”

The other girl closed her eyes and sat still for a moment. “I think so but I’ve never really- you know… never felt like this before so I don’t know.”

Glimmer almost leaned in and then thought better of it. “I think I like you to maybe, but I don’t know either, so maybe we can work together and figure that out.”

“Maybe… just let’s stay focused on defeating the dictator who’s in control of seventy percent of the known universe?”

“Okay.”

* * *

There was a total of two and a half months between the girl being kidnapped by Prime whilst he was looking for Hordak and when they finally got Pyrrhic victory, and that last month was definitely composed for some of the most interesting weeks within Catra’s living life for a few reasons. First off was when she really started to process exactly just how big of an empire Prime had amassed, upper command might have been composed of just clones but Force Captains and below were composed of various different peoples from across the universe, some alarmingly close to people she’d met before and some completely alien in form. That led to another reason this was an interesting time, she quickly realised her original plan had been relatively short-sided and in need of some massive retooling before she destroyed thousands of species without thinking. On paper get close to Horde Prime and then kill him and his entire network of clones seemed like a great idea, but that meant a large amount of subjugated people were suddenly expected to work together as one big happy family and fix all the damages Prime had done in his long life; and despite that being one of the greatest pipe dreams ever, somehow they were going to make it come true.

Above all else, though was that aforementioned “they”, Catra and Glimmer. Before this ship they had both hated each other for some pretty good reasons and circumstances forcing them to work together and develop some romantic desire was alarming just on its own, knowing the other girl was going through the same thing just flew up even more panic. Things had also gotten fairly awkward now that they were just planning instead of doing missions, the two of them sitting around in the privacy of their room all alone just talking as they needed to figure out what to do.

If they were better at staying on topic, they could have probably been off the ship a week after starting phase two but going by how things planned out Catra was happy to have more time. Take day three as a case for the happiness and lack of work ethic.

“What are you going to do when you get back?” Catra was sitting at the desk starting up plans and tossing them into the waste bin as she realised, they were terrible, Glimmer laying down on Catra’s bed and not doing work.

“The Horde is gone, or it will be by the time we're done, so I have nothing.”

“What about your friends, and, well…” Glimmer drifted off, they’d been very delicate around talking about the two of them together in any form.

“I have exclusively pushed people away and made them hate me, I don’t have any friends back there.”

“That’s not true. Adora still cares about you after everything, I didn’t talk to Scorpia a lot, but she seemed to care, and well… not all you friend are back there.”

Catra turned in the chair to look at Glimmer, the other girl blushing and looking away from her.

“Sparkles, are you asking me to stay with you after all this.”

“I- well, um, that’s not exactly it but-.”

Catra got out of her chair and walked over so she was standing over Glimmer, putting her face in her hands and making sure they were looking at each other.

“If you want me to stay Glim, I will. I just… don’t think you’ll wanna see me after this.”

“Why wouldn’t I wanna see you after this?”

“Because we're being forced together on this ship, once that’s not happening anymore all the bad stuff, I’ve done is gonna matter again and you won’t like me anymore.”

“I didn’t forget about everything you’ve done; the fighting, the conquest, the spies, destroying reality, bringing Prime here, my fucking mom being… I still don’t even really know. And I asked you to help me in face of all that, and I told you I like you in face of all that, and I’m asking you to stay with me in face of all that.”

Catra was the one blushing now. “R-r-right, well I guess I’ll stay in Bright Moon after all this. As long as you want me.”

* * *

“Hey Glimmer, can we talk about something.”

“What’s there to talk about?”

Five days has passed since their last conversation about their feeling and the war conversations had been largely stalled as well, neither girl was actually thinking about what they could do for other people when they were so caught up thinking about the other. Neither had actually been in a romantic relationship before and as a result anything that approached that ballpark tended to turn into a mess, the fact that they hadn’t even put that romance part into any real words yet hanging dangerously overhead. However, where they’re communication skills had been lacking and unproductive, their ability to be touched starved and isolated was leading to an exceeding amount of affection.

Like right now, where Glimmer had crawled into Catra’s bed and the two girls had ended up snuggling together.

“I mean, and not to say that it’s a bad thing I do like it, it’s just… you’ve kinda been sleeping in my bed since you became a Force Captain.”

“Well, I mean… Uhm, it’s cold?”

Catra let out a small snicker. “Yeah? It’s cold princess?”

“Shut up, I thought we were beyond petty jokes.”

“I wasn’t exactly good for our first month here, so jokes weren’t really on my mind but I’m, y’know, better now, I guess. So now they are again, and I like being petty.”

“Yeah? Are just going to start making fun of me from now on?”

“I have made fun of you a lot.”

Glimmer rolled over in the bed so that she was facing away from Catra, making the other girl remove the arms she had wrapped around her body in the process. Catra sat up in the bed and put a hand on her shoulder to try and get her to turn around.

“Wait- Glim, I… I’m sorry. If you don’t like it, I can stop, I like you more than bad jokes you know, that right? Please don’t cry.” That last sentence was said almost completely under her breath, Glimmer’s heart spiking as she made out the words.

“I’m tired.”

“O-okay.” Catra bit down on her lip and laid down so she was spooning the other girl.

* * *

It took another two weeks before the girls really talked again, the conversation in itself hadn’t been exceedingly difficult but a lot was dragged up alongside it. Glimmer focusing on all the things she didn’t like about Catra, all the things the girl had done that made her upset, almost like everything negative she’d thought about her suddenly dragged back up because of a stupid conversation. Catra on her end was doing better, she was actually putting in time planning their mission and making good plans at that, but her thought process was exceedingly limited when it came to the other girl. Catra’s had developed a bit of a black and white philosophy over the course of her life, which meant that as soon as Glimmer pulled away, she went from treating her as someone close to her into someone that meant nothing to her.

The problem then came when Catra looked over the plans she’d written and within them a large and extensive role for the other girl, one that was perhaps to frequent within them as a result of her emotional state, which would mean that she was going to have to reconcile with her for the purposes of getting off this god forbidden ship. She showed up in their cell around dinner time after hiding away her plans in a large section of ventilation she’d taken up as home in these past weeks, finding the other girl sitting on her bed and eating a glorified version of the Horde ration bars.

“Hay…”

“Hi.”

“Um, how are you doing.”

“Cut the crap Catra.”  
  


“Fine, Prime is taking a scouting ship down to the surface at the end of the week. I’ve flipped the entirety of the communication team on this ship and gotten communications down planetside, got in contact with Bow and Entrapta and told them to develop two viruses. The first one is for the cloning facility and it implants Hordak’s messed up and dying genetic code as the base making the body of any of the clones that refresh their cells like his, how am I going to make sure they all do that you ask? Second virus, shuts down the whole connected mental network between all of them and when that crashes, they’ll assume they need an update.”

“Well, I’m glad that you’ve thought your hole plan through, what’s your plan for all the people and for Prime himself?”

“I realized that I’m way over my head in figuring that out, Prime controls the whole fucking universe how am I supposed to govern that? Best I can do, best we can do, best anyone can do is throw out the dictators and hope people work it out for themselves. Prime is the reason I’m talking to you.”

“What you finally decide you want me to do something dark, you want me to kill a man and send the whole universe into unrest?”

“I will kill Prime; you’re not going to kill anyone-.”

“Oh yeah cause Glimmer is so innocent she could never hurt anyone!”

“Oh, you want to kill someone?! Sure, fucking go ahead you can kill him if you really want to! Doesn’t fucking matter to me. Why the fuck are you even fighting me on not committing murder, what is wrong with you?!”

“NOTHING! What’s wrong is you, and your attitude, and your plan, and your dismissive crap, and fucking flirting with me to get me on your side like what is wr-.”

Glimmer was promptly cut off in her little tirade by Catra grabbing her by her collar, hoisting her up to her feet and planting a quick kiss on her lips.

“I like you. I never lied about that once, never led you own. If you don’t wanna like me your perfectly entitled to, just on the grounds that I probably killed your mother you should have killed me without a second thought, but personally I really fucking like you Glim and I don’t want you to have to kill someone and that’s that.”

The two stood there for a long and extremely silent moment, both with a feeling of sickness within their stomachs. Either everything was going to be put on the table right now and something was going to come out of it, or things were going to stay hidden for the last few days they had together on the ship (and, ultimately, in life).

“So, we have six days before we have to be planetside and it’s do or die time?”

“Yeah…”

“Do you think you could set up a date night in there?”

Catra let a smirk rest over her face.

“I mean if I can give you the world in a week, I think I could do a date in a day.”

* * *

They were going to be on Etheria again tomorrow. Catra had gotten the location of the drive containing the viruses from the communication hub, everything was in place for the two of them and a handful of other trusted soldiers to go down, grab it and end the entirety of Horde Prime’s empire. Tomorrow this very real nightmare would be over, and they would be returned to the actual world and have to deal with everything that had happened since then and was going to happen as a result of this crazy plan to free every sentient being simultaneously from a long-standing dictator. The two girls were sitting on their bed, Glimmer was explicit in saying it was theirs, and simply holding hands as they stared forwards and contemplated the future.

“Glim, stop me if this is too much but, um, what should we do if one of use…” Both of them were already hosting the concept inside them, naming it would just make things worse.

“I don’t consider that an option, after everything we’ve survived to die here? You destroyed reality and everyone survived that.” They’d gotten word from the ground Angella had been found bad off but alive soon after they passed into the rest of the universe, and she was finally starting to recover.

“I mean stopping the greatest dictator to ever live is pretty big and pretty dangerous, if there was a threat to put your life out for, I think this would be it.”

“I would rather lose this fight then let you die.”

“R-really?”

“Obviously? Wait would you let me die.”

“Well, I get in trouble if I answer that.”

“Of course, you would, of course; the Horde fucking sucks you know that?”

“Yeah, I’m starting to get the idea. You know I couldn’t have married you in the Horde.”

“Because I’m a girl or because I’m a princess?”

“Okay well yes those, but I meant, they taught us to view you guys entirely as enemies, not even as people just targets for destruction. I would have never even thought to get to know you even if I had you prisoner, just information and then… you know. Hay you’re going to get to meet your dad when you go down, that’ll be nice.”

“Yeah and I can introduce you as my Horde Force Captain girlfriend.”

“That doesn’t sound right; if I remember the plan right, you’re the Force Captain and I’m just one of the lowly soldiers on the guard. He’d probably have a heart attack if you told him you were a Force Captain.”

Both girls let out a soft laugh and leaned into each other.

“Yeah… hay um don’t take this as an insult but if I don’t make it, well, can you not tell people about us. It’s still so new and I never really came out to my parents, so I wanna rest without them… yeah.”

“You’re going to have to make that up to me somehow, but I will keep this a secret. If you’re comfortable and I don’t make it I want you to tell people, but I don’t want to force you to do that.”

“I’ll try… Okay, this may be a little forward but well, maybe since we can’t say if well both live through tomorrow, we could do that last couple thing?”

Catra felt a layer of blush ruse over her face. “Uh, yeah, yeah sounds great. Just one more conversation.”

**Author's Note:**

> Alright so for context I didn’t go to class on Trans Day of Remembrance (2019) and ended up doing all the plotting for this that day cause I didn’t want to work on any of my major stuff, so if you wanted to know why I wrote this that’s why. Not sure if it was a good idea or not but I gotta write stuff to get better so what does it matter.
> 
> Anyway, see you again with more I Don't Trust U Anymore or whatever else I could be working on in the future if your reading this a while after posting. Abigale out.


End file.
